The present invention relates generally to an ink transferring device, and more specifically, to a photo-thermal transferring device which is applicable to a printer, a copier, a telecopier an intelligent copier and the like.
In order to transfer images, especially, onto ordinary paper, there have been so far proposed the electrophotography, the ink jet and heatsensitive transfer techniques, and they have been already put into practical use.
Of these prior art techniques, the electrophotography requires complex steps of charging, exposing, developing, transferring, latent image erasing and cleaning for transferring a latent electrostatic image in photoreceptor onto paper, and therefore devices realizing these steps must be provided. As a result, the overall device becomes complex in its arrangement and costly, and improving reliability and making whole size compact are difficult.
The ink jet technique has an advantage that images can be transferred directly onto paper and the developing and fixing steps are unnecessary. However, this technique has many disadvantages such as clogging of nozzle.
In the heatsensitive transfer technique, special paper which exhibits color when subjected to heat must be used. Since such paper must be used for each copying the cost unfavourably becomes high.